Tapped: The Prospect Group Blog

More than 230 contingent faculty members at Barnard College will be able to vote to form a union with the United Auto Workers Local 2110 this September, according to an announcement today. Last month, contingent faculty filed for a union with the NLRB after the UAW said more than two-thirds of contingents had petitioned in support. The Barnard College administration, however, contested the right of full-time and part-time contingent faculty to be in the same unit.

After the NLRB hearings ended last week, the college agreed to sign an election agreement that permits a union for all contingent faculty except for a small subset of full-timers who have supervisory roles. Barnard College’s President Debora Spar said in a statement that the administration “fully supports the right of these contingent faculty to make a decision for themselves and without interference.”

“We commend the College for reaching this election agreement with us rather than engaging in unnecessary conflict," said Julie Kushner, director of UAW Region 9A, which includes New England, New York City, and Puerto Rico. “We are encouraged by the growing number of employers who have been working out neutrality agreements such as this one. All workers deserve the right to choose unionization without influence from their employers.”

“This is a positive step forward for faculty,” adjunct lecturer Siobhan Burke said in a statement. “A union will give us a voice in our employment conditions. By lessening the precariousness of our economic situation as employees, it will allow us to stay focused on our role as educators.”

While not typically thought of as a higher education union, the United Auto Workers is one of a handful of non-traditional education unions—including SEIU and United Steelworkers—that has been active in adjunct organizing in recent years. For more on the range of union organizing strategies within the burgeoning adjunct movement, read my in-depth exploration: “When Adjuncts Go Union.”

There are a number of other schools in the region with adjuncts and graduate workers who are actively reaching out to UAW for organizing support.

Given the early support that Barnard adjuncts have shown for unionization, it’s likely that the September vote will pass. What remains to be seen is how much the union can get in concessions from the college in terms of pay increases, job stability, and health benefits. It’s worth noting that some of the biggest contract wins for adjuncts have come from wealthy universities like Tufts, Northeastern, and Boston University. Barnard College, a women’s liberal arts college in New York City that has long been affiliated with Columbia University, might just be able to dole out a generous contract.

Unlike in previous years, candidates need to do well in national polls to get into the debates, the presence at which is necessary for running any sort of legitimate campaign. So a laser-sharp focus on the early states is not a smart strategy. Presumably for this reason, last week, three of Rick Perry’s super PACs announced they have decided to run national ads on his behalf, far earlier than usual. Fox News could have inadvertently handed us a chance at wrestling some of that outsized influence away from Iowa and New Hampshire.

Admittedly, being bombarded with political ads is not the height of democratic participation. And while the bizarre and almost universally despised formula Fox and CNN have dreamed up isn’t going to keep presidential candidates from all but relocating to the early states, it may force them—at least the lower-polling Republicans—to pay more attention to the rest of the country, and lessen the stranglehold early states like Iowa and New Hampshire have on the presidential nominations.

If those states were good representative samples of the country as a whole, there may be a stronger case for them to be the first two contests, but they’re not. The U.S. population is about 63 percebt non-Hispanic white—Iowa and New Hampshire’s are about 91 percent and 94 percent, respectively. Around 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas; about 36 percent of Iowans and 40 percent of New Hampshirites do. And the median household income in New Hampshire is over $10,000 more than the median U.S. income. The more you look at it, the less sense it makes.

It’s a testament to both the unique role of the early states and my credentials as a civics nerd that I often imagine living in New Hampshire, conjuring up all sorts of run-ins with candidates and high-level campaign folk: Rand Paul interrupting a casual Sunday brunch to shake my hand, me giving Robby Mook that extra penny he needs in the coffee shop line, or narrowly missing Donald Trump’s convoy of limousines. And while I’m sure the early-voting states aren’t exactly these sorts of political wonderlands, their residents do enjoy the special privilege of having an intimate window into the national democratic process.

The Fox and CNN debate criteria may be seriously flawed, but as the Perry super PACs’ recent move has suggested, they may have also given the whole country a peek through that window.

For The Prospect’s summer issue I wrote a feature story about the growing number of charter school teachers looking to form unions at their schools. Elias Isquith, a staff writer at Salon was kind enough to interview me about my piece. We talked about some things I covered in the story, and a few other points that didn’t make it in. You can read it here!

Today, at a 500-guest ceremony, the Cuban flag was raised above Washington, D.C., for the first time since the Cold War, as the U.S. and Cuba got the green light to resume diplomatic relations. Since Obama’s announcement last December to reopen embassies, a Cuban-style “perestroika,” has allowed for the arrival of many new technologies to the island nation, including the Internet.

This month, after over a decade of near-isolation from the online world, President Raúl Castro opened 35 Wi-Fi hotspots around the island. This may sound insignificant, but it isn’t. Until recently, Cuba’s general public had access to only 419 computers with Internet. People would queue up for up to three hours at “navigation halls” to use dial-up modem Internet.

In Cuba, only 3.4 percent of households have Internet access, and as of now, there are no mobile data plans. The Internet has remained out of reach for most Cubans for so long mostly because of censorship, and not necessarily lack of resources. It is not clear whether increased access to the Internet will lead to Cubans using it as an organizing tool to demand more political freedoms. TheNew Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson predicts that Cuba is “bound on a course not unlike that of Vietnam and China: hybrid communist states in which citizens enjoy few political liberties but significant economic freedom.”

Though state-run and state-censored, the Internet is a huge win for Cubans, who have been barred access to research tools and social media networks that are so integral to education and communication in the developed world. As one Cuban woman told CNN, the Internet restriction in Cuba “disconnect[ed] us from the 21st century.”

According to a Reuters report, Cuba plans to extend Internet access to 50 percent of the population by 2020. In contrast, it took over a decade for the U.S. to reach the 50 percent benchmark, and for many Americans living in poverty, Internet access is still a privilege denied to them.

A number of studies in recent years, including one released by the White House last week, have linked broadband access with economic disparity. More than 90 percent of U.S. households headed by college graduates have access to the Internet, but less than one of every two lowest-income households can get online.

In today’s world, it’s clear that barriers to Internet access perpetuate poverty. As the White House study put it, “While many middle-class U.S. students go home to Internet access, allowing them to do research, write papers, and communicate digitally with their teachers and other students, too many lower-income children go unplugged every afternoon when school ends. This ‘homework gap’ runs the risk of widening the achievement gap, denying hardworking students the benefit of a technology-enriched education.”

Last week, at a school in the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma, Obama announced that hundreds of thousands of public-housing residents in 27 cities and one tribal nation will be receiving Internet access for less than $10 per month, or for free in Atlanta, Kansas City, and Nashville. Obama’s plan, called ConnectHome, is an important reminder that the digital divide exists not just between countries but also within wealthy countries like ours.

On Friday Adora Cheung, the co-founder and CEO of Homejoy, announced she will be closing down the app-based cleaning service by the end of July. Homejoy, which started in 2012, relies entirely on contract labor and is commonly referred to as the “Uber for house cleaning.”

Cheung told Re/code that the “deciding factor” to shut Homejoy down was the four lawsuits her company faces over whether Homejoy workers were misclassified as independent contractors. These controversial lawsuits have made it even harder for Homejoy to raise funds in Silicon Valley. As Re/code’s Carmel DeAmicis put it, “The on-demand space has become a riskier bet for investors in a short amount of time.”

Just days earlier, David Weil, the head of the Wage and Hour division at the Department of Labor, issued new guidelines for interpreting when an independent contractor should actually be considered an employee. Weil stressed that the scope of the employment relationship under the Fair Labor Standards Act is “very broad.”

The debate over worker misclassification is shaping up to be a contentious point in the 2016 election. Though Hillary Clinton’s campaign told TechCrunch that Clinton has not taken a stance on whether Uber drivers should be labeled contractors or employees, she did recently say that the “so-called gig economy” was “raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.”

It looks like many employers aren’t waiting around to see where the next president will land on the on-demand economy and worker classification. More companies, like Homejoy, may close up shop in light of costly litigation they can’t afford. Others may follow the lead of Instacart—the “Uber for groceries”—which recently announced that its “personal shoppers” could become part-time employees if they so choose.

Buzzfeed labor reporter Caroline O'Donovan suggests that maybe what Homejoy’s closure signifies is that the on-demand model is simply unsustainable for smaller companies. “Homejoy’s closing isn’t necessarily an indication that the on-demand economy is doomed,” she writes. “It might instead be the beginning of an opportunity for bigger players like Amazon and Google, which have pockets deep enough to stay alive when the classification issues wends its ways through the courts.”

Indeed, the day Cheung announced Homejoy would be closing down, Google quickly scooped up 20 members of the Homejoy product and engineering team to help the Internet search giant enter into the home services market.

Fusion’s Kevin Roose made a similar argument back in June, predicting that, “in the next six to 12 months, we will see a significant consolidation in the on-demand industry.” While companies like Uber aren’t going away, he thinks “lots of small and mid-sized companies will be washed out of the market.”

Looks like some Silicon Valley entrepreneur will need to innovate the “Uber for saving smaller Ubers”—stat.

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third District upheld the constitutionality of Delaware’s Election Disclosure Act. The 2012 law, which is a transparency safeguard instituted after Citizens United v. FEC, closed the loophole allowing outside groups to evade disclosure as long as their ads, known as “sham issue ads,” refrained from expressly advocating for a certain candidate’s victory or defeat.

For instance, the ad could simply say “Call Senator So-and-So and tell them to stop doing such and such.” The 2012 disclosure act stipulates that if an outside political group mentions any Delaware candidate in a message, it must identify itself and who its main donors are. And in upholding the law, a three-judge panel unanimously rejected the plaintiff’s argument that disclosure should be confined specifically to instances of “express advocacy.”

“The Delaware Elections Disclosure Act promotes transparency in elections, which the Supreme Court has long recognized as a vital governmental interest, and yesterday’s ruling ensures that Delaware voters will continue to have access to the information they need to make informed decisions on Election Day,” said Tara Malloy, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, in a statement.

Campaign finance reform advocates call this law one of the strongest state disclosure laws in the country. It’s actually largely based on federal law that was passed in the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act, which was the last major act of campaign finance reform at the federal level. There are a number of states that have instituted similar provisions that keep unaccountable groups from swaying voters.

Chalk this up as one small win in the broader fight to expose the big-money billionaires who run rampant in our brave, new post-Citizens world.

Oklahoma was not a part of the old Confederacy, but that historical fact did not stop some from greeting the first black president with the Confederate flag when he arrived in Oklahoma City on Wednesday.

The purpose of Obama’s trip to the small town of Durant, Oklahoma was to visit the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and to talk about expanding economic opportunity, which the white protesters seemed to think was a good time to display one of the most prominent symbols of intolerance, hatred, slavery, and racism. And unfortunately, the photo of the battle flags being waved looks eerily similar to multiple such “protests” in America’s bloody and hateful past.

The Confederate flag was re-popularized during the Civil Rights era as a way for Southern states to protest integration. Arkansas, like many other Southern states, was hostile to the desegregation of schools. At Little Rock Central High School, nine black students were prevented from entering the school on September 2, 1957. The next day, a protest was held outside of the high school in which the crowd waved Confederate flags.

President John F. Kennedy had campaigned on equal rights for blacks—earning him the disdain of many white Southerners—and on June 11, 1963, he delivered a civil rights speech calling for equality. On the day of his assassination, just five months later, Kennedy was greeted by a Confederate flag upon his arrival in Dallas.

In March 1965, when Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and countless others marched from Selma to Montgomery to protest the lack of voting rights for black people, hostile whites taunted the marchers, yelled slurs, and proudly waved the Confederate flag.

White people who flew the Confederate flag during the Civil Rights era had very clear intentions. They were against equal rights for black people and invested in maintaining the status quo of white supremacy. Any black person, or any person, advocating for the equality of blacks was often met with a symbol of hate.

We are living in a time when black people are killed by police for traffic violations, a white presidential candidate calls Mexican immigrants rapists (and subsequently surges in popularity), and a white supremacist murders nine people in a historically black church and the media bend over backward looking for a reason to not call him what he is—a racist.

So when the first black president goes to a Southern state and is met with the old Confederate flag, the message is clear: You are not equal. Electing a black man to the highest office of the land was an impressive feat for a country with such an ugly recent history, but we still have a long way to go before blacks are truly equal. The fact that people, under the guise of “heritage,” will still wave a symbol of hatred to protest racial progress is proof.

A shocking decision came down from the Wisconsin Supreme Court today that quite literally destroys a longstanding investigation into whether Governor Scott Walker illegally coordinated with right-wing political groups during his 2012 recall campaign. This comes just three days after he formally announced his presidential run.

As ThinkProgress reports, the court, voting along partisan lines, ruled that in order to “prevent the chilling of otherwise protected speech” investigators must “permanently destroy all copies of information and other materials obtained through the investigation” and ordered that all those accused of illegal coordination doesn’t have to cooperate with investigators any longer.

Watchdog groups have called out the court for refusing to recuse justices with very clear conflicts of interest. And in one of those lovely twists of fate only found in the world of American politics, the groups that Walker allegedly coordinated with were fundamental in electing a number of the conservative judges currently on the bench.

The decision is a devastating blow for campaign finance reform advocates because a successful investigation could have set broad precedent for future political campaigns. It is possible, according to The New York Times, that the decision will be appealed before the United States Supreme Court.

“This decision effectively eviscerates contribution limits in Wisconsin,” said Daniel Weiner, senior counsel at the Brennan Center, in a statement. “By limiting the reach of Wisconsin coordination rules to ‘express advocacy,’ for or against candidates, the court has made campaign finance law extraordinarily easy to evade. No other court has gone this far and for good reason—it is a misreading of the law and threatens fair and transparent elections.”

Here’s a very helpful video from The New York Times on why it’s so easy—despite campaign law—for politicians to coordinate with super PACs and other shadowy groups.

For more on the pile of dark money that Scott Walker has used throughout his slithery political ascension, read Prospect columnist Adele Stan’s detailing of his long history of donor scandals.

Each year, the last player chosen in the NFL draft is nicknamed “Mr. Irrelevant.” If the Democratic presidential nominating contest was like the NFL draft, former Republican, Independent, and Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee wouldn’t even be Mr. Irrelevant—he’d be the next guy in line.

Think for a second about how rare it is for 1,001 people to agree on anything. You probably couldn’t get 1,001 random people to agree that the U.S. has 50 states or that the Chicago Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908. If you had 1,001 scientists, 100.1 of them wouldn’t believe in the manmade origins of climate change. If you had 1,001 dentists, 100.1 of them would not recommend Crest. In Chafee’s case, the unanimity of his rejection was undoubtedly aided by the fact that 78 percent of those polled had no idea who he was and thus had no real option to choose him—although that shouldn’t make his campaign feel much better.

Full disclosure: some of us here at the Prospect’s office are a bit obsessed with Chafee. From his insistence on converting to the metric system to the bizarre saga of his Facebook password, his presidential campaign is equal parts fascinating and funny, and we are not embarrassed to say we can’t get enough of it. So yes, when it comes to Chafee, we may not be the most objective critics of his newsworthiness. But while his abysmal polling numbers (or lack thereof) may not be technically newsworthy, they do beg a few interesting questions. First and foremost: why is he doing so poorly?

There is the obvious: he’s underfunded and his name recognition is nil. But why?

On Wednesday, Matthew Yglesias at Vox had a piece on Donald Trump in which he says that “Trumpism” is what a successful third party in American politics would look like:

Indeed, Trumpism is what a third party would have to sound like to get traction in America—a grab bag of issue positions that appeal to a substantial minority of the electorate but that neither party wants to wholeheartedly embrace because the ideas are too toxic in the elite circles that fund campaigns.

He specifically compares Trump to Michael Bloomberg, the kind of independent moderate who conventional wisdom tells us would be an attractive third party candidate—the best of both worlds. Yglesias makes a convincing case that it’s actually the best of no worlds. This is exactly the kind of candidate Chafee is, just on the Democratic side.

On the one hand, voters and donors who are attracted to his dovish foreign policy, environmentalism, and opposition to the death penalty already have a candidate, Bernie Sanders, and an alternative, Martin O’Malley. On the other hand, voters and donors who are attracted to his support for market solutions and free trade also already have a candidate, Jim Webb. For everyone else in the Democratic Party who wants someone who can beat the Republican nominee, there’s Hillary Clinton. Chafee is really just a fifth wheel.

Of course, all of this begs the question: why is he running? One of my colleagues at the Prospect has become a little too attached to the idea of the metric system and claims Chafee is just angling for a Cabinet position as Commerce Secretary (the department in charge of the National Institute of Standards and Technology). Originally, I saw his candidacy as the Democratic equivalent to Lindsay Graham’s, as something to check off his career bucket list. The more and more I read about him, though, I’m not so sure. He may genuinely believe he is the best choice for both the party and the country—despite the fact that he’s the only one.

As I boarded my flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday morning, I was struck by something peculiar: There were almost no Haitians and at least five groups of white Americans in matching T-shirts. The back of one bright blue shirt read, “Al checher moun pou Jezi,” which means “Go look for people for Jesus” in Haitian Creole. It dawned on me that my plane was filled with evangelicals who were on their way to my mother country to preach Christianity.

At least 80 percent of Haiti identifies as Catholic and there are Protestants, such as Seventh-Day Adventists, in Haiti, too. On Sunday morning as we drove to the coast, the roads were flooded with adults and children dressed in their Sunday best, clutching Bibles and heading to church. Tap taps, the colorful buses that transport people in and around Port-au-Prince, often display religious slogans like “Christ Lives” and “God is love.” In a country like this, mission trips to Haiti to spread the word of Jesus seem self-serving, at best.

Haiti is no doubt compounded by political, environmental, and economic problems. But the way to help is not by bringing a Bible and talking religion to people who already go to church regularly but are worried about where their next meal is coming from. If churches are truly interested in helping Haiti, there are several ways to do so.

Deforestation has devastated much of Haiti. My father has made it his personal mission to remind the people living near my grandmother’s countryside home that for every tree they cut down, they should plant ten more. To combat hunger, religious people who travel to Haiti can teach kids how to plant vegetables and fruits and show them how to sustainably fish in the rivers and Caribbean Sea. Religious groups can donate money to schools, which in turn can educate the youth and turn them into the teachers, lawyers, and doctors that Haiti badly needs.

The list of ways to participate in the rebuilding and reconstruction in Haiti is endless. Unfortunately, spreading the word of evangelical Christianity doesn’t do much—except bring self-satisfaction to those invested in spreading their own beliefs.